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Vol. 72/No. 46      November 24, 2008

 
On the Picket Line
 
Germany: IG Metall unionists
walk out, demand wage raise
More than 45,000 metal and electronics workers went on strike across Germany November 3 to demand an 8 percent pay raise. The following day workers at the Siemens company walked off the job for several hours, while employees at about 300 companies in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia staged work stoppages. Since the strikes started November 1, some 150,000 workers at 500 companies have participated in these short walkouts, the Wall Street Journal reported. The actions are being organized by the IG Metall union, which rejected the employers’ offer for a 2.9 percent wage increase over 14 months.

—Brian Williams

Machinists at Boeing ratify
four-year contract, end strike
SEATTLE—Members of the International Association of Machinists began returning to work after ratifying a new four-year contract on November 1 by a 74 percent vote in favor. They were on strike for eight weeks.

The contract was similar in many respects to the initial company proposal. The union blocked a few concessions sought by the company. It won some limits on outsourcing of factory work to nonunion contractors, and held off demands for increased payments by workers for medical benefits.

Machinists will receive pay raises of 5 percent, 3 percent, 3 percent, and 4 percent in successive years. They will receive lump-sum payments of about $5,000 this year, plus $1,500 in each of the next two years.

—Edwin Fruit

Two-month strike holds
at Louisiana chemical plant
WESTLAKE, Louisiana—Seventy-three union members have been striking here since September 4 to win an improved union contract at BioLab, a division of Chemtura Corp. The plant makes chemical products for swimming pools and bathroom cleansers.

Ken Fugatt of the Lake Charles Metal Trades Council, the union organization that bargains for workers at the facility, reported that union members rejected the first two company proposals. These included demands for steep cuts in pay and increased probation for new hires, elimination of guaranteed show-up pay, ending holiday pay for plant operators, a $100 increase in monthly health-care costs for many workers, freezing pension coverage, and replacing pensions with a 401(k) program.

—Steve Warshell  
 
 
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